


To reason logic

by ZHIREM



Series: A moral spectrum [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Gen, No Beta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4565601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZHIREM/pseuds/ZHIREM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes knowing who you are doesn't help you know what you believe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To reason logic

**Author's Note:**

> If the writing seems confusing, it is written that way in regards to passive voice, auxillary verbs, tenses, and pov, because James is very confused himself. 
> 
> And as always punctuation fail is all fail.

Time marches on and he thinks he will be James, not Bucky, just James. It fits better, James will be the person who is all the people he was and is. He was born as a James and hopefully he will die as a James. 

Naming as an attempt to frame his existence. To delineate who he shall be in the future, providing structure to experience, but the name is not the thing which is named. His name used as a symbol for his entirety. The James who was Bucky is lesser than the James he is now. Was Bucky actually greater than the first James though? The symbol is not what it symbolizes. Will it even be helpful, this new name which is old, to separate out who he is working to become?

James, who turned into Bucky, who turned into a womanizer. Bucky tried not to lead the women on, to give them false hopes of marriage, he knew it didn't always work. Bucky knew some of the women lived in their own fantasy world of marriage and children. He still took them dancing and then took them to a hotel if they allowed. What does that say about Bucky? Time and place, then and now, ideas change, morals change.

Sasha didn't do that, but then Sasha mostly just killed people, and was proud to serve Russia by doing so. So was Sasha more than Bucky, more than the first James? Or less?

Is it possible to divide up his lives and compare who was 'better'? How would he even define 'better', what intrinsic qualities and values would he give it? How is 'better' quantified?

Sasha could not have existed without James and Bucky. Bucky was the one who learned to shoot, Sasha just perfected it. Bucky was proud of his abilities, he was congratulated and praised for the difficult shots he could take and the number of women who would willingly spread their legs for him. How can behavior that is praised by the culture one is raised in be wrong? Was Bucky 'better' than the first James for following that cultural norm?

Sasha was born with a metal arm. He knew no other way. Bucky had been hurt and made afraid by the loss of his flesh arm, denying that his new arm was a part of him. His previous self had been weak in so many ways. Unlike Bucky Sasha knew no other way to be. He did not feel lesser for having lost a part of his flesh like Bucky did. Sasha's body was a vehicle to implement the will of the Soviet Union. His improved arm let him do the will of his country to greater effect. It allowed him to better follow orders, to do his duty, to protect his comrades even when injured. To be right and good. Is that not 'better'?

Sasha was raised to be a killer and so he was one; to do his duty was to be good, to kill the enemies of the state was to be good. It did not matter if the targets were internal political dissidents, foreign political figures, spy's, traitors to Russian, or the wives and children of his targets. To kill them was to do his duty, and to do his duty was to be righteous and good. 

Does that mean he was a 'better' person then those who did not obey? 

James, unlike Bucky, feels no allegiance to America, though he was born there and served her as Bucky in the war. He can not offer any allegiance to Russia either, though he served The Soviet Union longer then America, and under so many names. All those names and identities were built off of Sasha, and Sasha, well Sasha has always been the Winter Soldier at his most basic level. 

James feels no attachment to any of the private security organizations that he was a member of, and he feels no particular allegiance to any one person. Most of the people he served with are long dead. It is freeing, but harder. Who will tell him what to do, tell him who the enemies are? Who will tell and show him what is right?

He had loved America and Russia at different times, willing to kill and die for them as needed. There is a distance now, he looks at the people in those countries and thinks, why should I do anything for you? What makes you worth anything to me? The answer is that they don't mean anything to him. As of now there really is no reason to fight for them. 

If he isn't a part of a group how will he decide what is right and proper? How will he know what 'right' or 'proper' even mean? Should those categories be based on the sum of his past experiences and allegiances? What if his past experiences from his diffrent lives don't agree with one another? If to do his duty and kill his enemies is good how can he be good if he does not know who his enemies are?

While he is a James now, that identity is based on a James he does not understand, a Bucky he does not respect, and a Winter Soldier that lived so many different lives and followed so many masters he is not cohesive. How is he to build an identity, much less a personal code when he does not know what he believes in? 

Without someone telling him how he should feel and what actions he should take, how will he ever believe in anything?

The only thing he is sure of is that there are some people, who might have survived project Insight, that he would really enjoy hurting. Since most Hydra agents are criminals would hurting and killing them be 'good'?

What is logical is not always reasonable and what is reasonable is not always logical. How can he, on his own, decide what is both?


End file.
